Top 10 mobile games of the week of june 2017

In the words of Will Smith, summer, summer, summertime, time to sit back and unwind. He failed to add that you could always unwind with a new mobile game, but that’s because those did not exist in … 1991? Man, we’re getting old.

But hey, at least we’ve been around long enough to remember the Sega games that the company is bringing to mobile. You’ll find them on our list of new stuff that’s caught our eye for this week, but we’re saving them for the end for reasons that you’ll learn when you get there.

Plenty of other interesting stuff until then, so let’s not wait any longer.

1.Panthera Frontier

Blasting off to adventure in space with a main character who kinda, sorta looks like some other video game characters you may already know? We can dig it. Panthera Frontier promises all kinds of aliens you can meet and train as crew members, a wide variety of ships that can be customized with weapons and other spaceship stuff, a huge universe to explore and much more. We’re not super keen on the IAPs on top of a paid download, but we’ll reserve judgment until we’ve had some time to spend with the game. Then perhaps we’ll complain later. Can’t rule it out.

2.The House of Da Vinci

If you’ve got a hankering for mixing history with your gaming, this might be your jam. The product of a successful Kickstarter campaign, The House of Da Vinci asks you to find out what happened to the actual Leonardo Da Vinci, other than providing the inspiration for the name of a certain Ninja Turtle. Travel back in time, solve puzzles, interact with Da Vinci’s workshop and even see through things. Now we call that x-ray vision, but who knows what it was called back then?

3.Hopeless 3: Dark Hollow Earth

Hopeless 3 implies that there were two previous games in the same series, and that is indeed the case. Cute little Blobs are in trouble thanks to some really terrifying looking monsters, and only you can save them by taking a tiny cart with a pistol and upgrading both your means of transportation and your weapons. Look, we’ll be honest: we’re not sure conventional weapons would really stop some of these things. Those teeth! But it does look like it will be fun trying.

4.Hey Wingman

Considering that the term “wingman” has two semi-related but different meanings, you might reasonably expect that this game has something to do with flying air or space missions and assisting a colleague in fighting off enemies. You’d be wrong, though, because it’s actually about helping out in the romance department and making sure your friend doesn’t end up marrying someone he shouldn’t. Or that’s what it looks like to us. Because what are friends for, right?

5.Tentacles: Enter the Mind

Not too many mobile games began their lives as Windows Phone exclusives (well, Windows exclusives, and back then there were still Windows Phones, so …) like this one did. It eventually made its way to iOS, and now its life cycle is complete as it finally arrives on Android too. You play as some kind of tentacled monster and actually roam the inside of a doctor’s psyche, destroying stuff that shouldn’t be there. So as amazing as it might be, the title actually tells you exactly what to expect.

6.SEGA — we need to talk about SEGA

We promised we’d get back to SEGA and what it’s up to at the moment. Earlier this week, SEGA announced SEGA Forever, featuring completely free, ad-supported versions of classic games of yesteryear. An app serving you cool Genesis games for free? That sounds like a dream come true.

Alas, once you get into the fine print, SEGA Forever may not be quite as thrilling as gamers who have been around since the 8-bit era might assume. It’s not just one app but a series of standalone games that will be flooding onto the app stores at a rate of five every two weeks. Also, as other outlets have pointed out, these games aren’t even necessarily new to mobile, as you can see in the first batch that is live now.

Still, there’s no real downside to seeing these old games exposed to new audiences, and we’re hyped for Phantasy Star II if nothing else. Altered Beast … not so much, frankly.

7.Framed 2

The original Framed was one of those titles that grabbed you with its unique style as soon as you saw a trailer for it and just never let go of you. Not literally, of course, that would probably be at least misdemeanor assault. Oh, and it had Hideo Kojima’s personal seal of approval, so there’s that. The sequel is apparently actually a prequel, as it takes place prior to the events of the first game. It still looks incredibly cool, so even without the element of, “Wow, this looks like nothing I’ve ever seen before” going for it, one expects this could be well worth your time and money.

8 Fowlst

No weekly list of new mobile games is complete without one entry that is simply bats–t crazy. From a premise perspective, Fowlt is definitely that, as it tells the tale of an owl who finds itself in Hell. There’s probably a theological discussion to be had here, but we’ll simply focus on the minimalist graphics and intense-looking gameplay and say that this game has our attention. Simple controls, huge bosses and buzzsaws that we assume cut you in half over and over for eternity … all things you didn’t know you wanted but probably do.

9. Lowlander II: Lowerlander

The sequel to what Flat Black claims was the “somewhat-acclaimed retro-rpg, Lowlander” (and K. Dot would appreciate that attempt to be humble), this is taking the throwback RPG to its logical extreme. As in, it says it will “make your iPhone 7 Plus feel like an Apple II+.” And yet it has over 16 hours of gameplay, cloud saves so you can pick up on another device and no IAPs. In other words, all the modern comforts to go with the old school adventuring. Now if there was also a version for the Apple II+, that would be pretty boss.

10.Dr. Nakamoto’s Digital Eggs

Do digital eggs come before digital chickens or vice versa? You may find out the answer to that question in this game, where you discover the last working prototype of the system invented by the titular Dr. Nakamoto. Once you hatch a digital egg, it becomes a new take on the time-honored virtual pet thing, and you’ve got to keep it alive, happy and healthy. It might evolve into a more advanced digital life form after a while, or you can simply move on and try hatching one of the other 81 pets. Weirdly cute or cutely weird. Maybe both.